True Story

Luke 24:1-8


On the first day of the week, vey early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.'" Then they remembered his words.



There is a little phrase which has crept almost unnoticed into language in recent years. The phrase is “true story.” After an anecdote is told, people say “true story” For example. “I saw a grizzly bear in the road on the way to church. True story.” Or “My uncle won the lottery and gave the money away. True story.” We add “true story” to indicate that is is not a tall tale or a joke.

It’s odd that we have to say that. When people say “I’m telling the truth. I am not lying.” It seems to indicate that whatever else they say might actually be a lie. Why else would they hve to tell us that this statement is the truth?

The addition of this little phrase “true story” is also necessary because of an even more peculiar trend in our society. The world doesn’t seem to care whether a story is true or not. We live in the age of “postmodernism”--a world view that says nothing really makes is true, but reality comes from the stories we tell. A newsman does not say “Here is the news.” He says “here are the stories we are following.” Sportswriters don’t just bring the facts. They create stories. Politicians speak of a “narrative”—a construction of what is happening into a story. The president is either a hero or a villain in the story. The story we believe is everything.

But stories are not arbitrary. The story we believe must be the truth. \

Every religion has its story. Islam tells stories about Mohammed, Buddhism tells stories about the Buddha, Jews have stories about Moses, and Christians have stories about Jesus. The postmodern philosophy says you can believe any of them, so long as the story works for you. You could even base your life on a fantasy story, like some science fiction fans do, and that is all right with postmoderns, just as long as the story give meaning to your lives. That’s the spirit of our age, which says you can believe whatever story you like.

This is a super-tolerant view of reality. But it is not reality. We still crave to know the truth. Why else would people say “true story.” If nothing is real, we would not need to say “true story.”

Suppose I tell you that the dam is breaking and if you don’t get out of your house, you are going to drown. Do you think it makes any difference if that story is true or not? Suppose I tell you that my cancer was cured by eating lima beans. Does it matter whether I’m selling the truth? It certainly does.

Modern Christians have more of postmodernism in them than they like to acknowledge. There is a part of us which isn’t sure whether the stories we tell are true, and so we are reluctant to really put them to the test. We say we believe that we are going to heaven, yet we fear death. We say we believe that everything happens for a purpose, yet we complain. We say we believe that Jesus is the only way of salvation, but we also believe it is impolite to discuss religion with unbelievers. We say we love, but we hate. We say we turn the other cheek, but we seek revenge. We could go on and on.

The Bible goes to great pains to prove the resurrection. All four Gospels end with it. They contain the names of people who saw him and the places where He appeared. They tell about Him eating and doing work to show he had a material body. It tells of people touching the holes in his hands and side, to remind us that it really was Him. The differences between the accounts are very minor and easily accounted for. These differences make the stories far more believable than if they told the same story in the same way.

Many books have been written sifting through the evidence of the four Gospels, either to prove or disprove it. Many have started out to disprove it, only to become convinced that it was true. Lew Wallis, a union general in the Civil War, started out to disprove the resurrection, only to become convinced, and out of that certainty wrote the novel Ben Hur. Frank Moris, trial lawyer, started out to do the same thing, and produced the book Who Moved the Stone? C. S. Lewis, a committed agnostic, believed that Christianity was just a myth. In the end, he became convinced that it was true. G. K. Chesterton, another English writer, became convinced of the truth of the Gospels by reading skeptics. These men embraced the truth of the story, and it changed their lives.

Yet we who have grown up in the church, who have always been believers, secretly doubt the resurrection. We are not the only ones. Even Jesus’ closest friends doubted it. In Luke’s account, the women who followed Jesus showed up at the tomb on the day after the Sabbath to finish the job of embalming him. These women had held the lifeless body of Jesus in their hands. They washed away the blood which poured from his side. They put the coins on those lifeless, half-opened eyes. They wrapped that body up in a winding sheet and put the cloth over his face. They knew how tight the winding sheet was. They put the spices on the body, spices which were not intended to preserve the body, like our embalming fluid, but to speed up decay. They had copious evidence that Jesus was not alive, but was dead.

Jesus had told them He would be resurrected it, but they had forgotten. Who could blame them for doubting His words? Their minds could not cope with Jesus being wrong, so they shut those words out of their minds. They no longer remembered them. Our minds cannot cope with evidence that does not support our beliefs, especially during times of great stress. .

But when they came to the tomb, the stone was rolled away. The Roman seal was broken—an act punishable by death. An earthquake had shaken the tomb door open. The Roman guard deserted their posts--another act punishable by death. It would be like the Secret Service deserting the President. Instead of the Roman guard, two men dressed in white occupied the tomb. The angels words differ somewhat between the four accounts. This is not surprising, since modern reporters at a press conference will take away different quotes.

"Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.'

He is not dead. The resurrection had occurred.

When the angel finished, the women suddenly remembered Jesus’ words to them.

Matt 12:40 “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

Mark 9:31-32 "The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise."

John 2:19 "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days."



The women remembered these words.

These women knew Jesus well. His own mother was there. So was Mary Magdalene, the ex-prostitute who became the leader of the disciples’ “women’s auxiliary.” So were prominent women in the community, and maybe Peter’s aunt, too. They all saw the angels and the empty tomb.

They weren’t the only ones. Mary Magdalene later had a conversation with Jesus. Peter and John raced each other to the tomb to see it. Two men walking in the hills outside of Jerusalem reported having Jesus join them in conversation for hours. Then Jesus himself appeared in the upper room to them all. Thomas felt the holes in his hands and side. He ate fish with them. He appeared in Galilee to more than five hundred people at the same time. Who could have missed the truth of the miracle. With definite and abundant proofs, Jesus showed Himself alive. True story.

Why is that important? Because if it isn’t true, then we are deceivers and liars. But if it is true, then we hold in our hands the key to heaven. We have the shocking proof that nothing is impossible to God, not even the conquest of death itself. God did not let His Son see corruption, but delivered him from the grave and us along with it.

You must be the judge. If this story is true, then we must follow. If this story is true, then we are part of it. We are living out the resurrection of Jesus in our very lives.

This is more than just a holiday. This is a holy day, the beginning of all things and the end of all things. It is the crux of history, and the salvation of the world.